


Innervate

by tokidokifish



Series: Nerves [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-26
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-23 02:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokidokifish/pseuds/tokidokifish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But when they wake up, it will be together. And that’s exactly how it should be."</p><p>For all of the wonderful people who for some crazy reason wanted this: a continuation of Enervate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innervate

For the longest time, there is only Charles and Erik in the room he had left behind.

Early on, when Charles is still all but trapped in that dark, grasping pit, it’s easy for him to slip away again. They spend their time wrapped up in each other, and Erik soothes the sick prickling of guilt ( _I should be leading them, they’re my responsibility_ ) when it appears. “You can’t take care of them until you take care of yourself,” he tells Charles, and Charles – surrounded by Erik, his reassurance, his love – accepts that.

It’s all knotted together for Charles, the then and now – _exacerbated and exacerbating in turn_ – and Erik tells him, with his mouth or with his mind (it was hard to tell and didn’t matter anyhow), that he never did anything wrong. Charles doesn’t believe him, but he has no choice, because for Erik it is the absolute truth, naked and bare in his mind for Charles to see. For however much the rest of his feelings might still be twisted up, Erik loves him utterly and completely, and that truth doesn’t waver, no matter what they find waiting in the blackness.

There must have been more than that, but whenever Erik looks back, all he remembers is them, together and alone, tangled with one another in Charles’ mind, on Erik’s bed.

 

 

There are things for which they cannot forgive themselves.

 

 

For Charles, it’s words.

He thinks – he’s _convinced_ – that if he had just picked something else to say, anything else, that things would have been different. Erik eventually gets Charles to show him what he couldn’t on the beach, the press of hundreds of human minds on the ships. There was the fear of _them_ , the anger, bright and ugly, what Erik expected, what he always expected, but there was something else, too – disbelief and outrage at what had been ordered of them.

The fear of defiance wrapped up hideously with the sick, nauseous disgust at the thought of actually obeying.

Still weak from Shaw’s dying, aching and panicked, Charles had voiced what he felt in exactly the wrong way. And Erik is angry, still so angry, but it’s a deeper, sadder emotion: at the stupidity of it all, at all the ways it could have gone differently.

He draws Charles out of the tangle of guilt and pain and anger, piece by piece. 

 

 

For Erik, it’s the bullet. That single, hateful bullet.

He slowly learns the myriad of ways Charles’ life has been changed irrevocably, everything he’s taken from the other man, and Erik _aches_ with self-hatred. For the longest time, neither of them will touch the seething self-directed fury and heartbreak of over-bright blue eyes staring up at him and _you did this_. When Charles finally does, late one night, whispers _but you didn’t mean it_ , Erik squeezes his eyes shut and hurts for a wholly new reason.

Erik didn’t mean to, he would never mean to, but he did. The fact he will only continue to hurt Charles is impossible to escape, but when Charles catches the thought, he gives Erik something dangerously close to a smile, even if it’s soft and ragged around the edges.

 _It’s a little late for second guessing_ is what Erik hears, and then, softer, less projected: _This is worth whatever comes._

 

 

Eventually, the real world returns.

It’s not been an easy transition, by any means. For those first few months, when Erik and Charles are still so wrapped up in the demons of Charles’ past and each other, they hardly have time to spare of the particulars of integrating their forces. The responsibility ends up falling to Emma, of all people – the Brotherhood trusts her as a teammate, and Xavier’s mutants tentatively respect her for her role in helping their Professor. She is a natural buffer, in the end, and the fact she seems to have little time to spare of the drama of either side is actually something of a boon, given the circumstances.

Xavier’s mutants are most wary of Azazel – the kids are frightened of his appearance, of course, while the older of them remember the sick, unnerving thuds of his numerous victims during Shaw’s attack. He doesn’t go out of his way to reassure any of them, but the way he dotes on Raven is incongruously gentle, making him significantly less intimidating. She and Hank have moved on with a soft, mutual regret for what could have been into a cautious friendship, but Azazel remains touchy and territorial around Hank until it actually exploded into a fight – and strangely, after that, they seem to come to something of an understanding, tentative respect expanded on both sides.  

Ultimately, it's the most difficult for Angel, at first – she was the one that defected to Shaw, after all, and for a while she takes the brunt of half the mansion’s bottled up pain and anger for everything that happened since. But Raven is there to come to her defense, flaring and biting with anger, and Raven’s opinion still matters a great deal – since she hadn’t gone until Charles had all but told her to, since Alex and Sean had seen the way she reacted when she received even the slightest indication that her brother was in serious trouble.

By tacit agreement, they do their best to keep the children out of it.

Eventually, things settle.

 

 

Charles and Erik separate piece by piece. They cannot live wrapped up in each other, however much they would rather.

The helmet is still in the mansion; Erik can feel it, when he makes the effort, its strange composition alien amongst the more familiar alloys of Hank’s lab. Hank is trying to understand it, to recreate whatever material it’s constructed from, because there are potential benefits too obvious to ignore.

For Erik, it is an anathema. Charles doesn’t let himself think of it, much, and Erik always knows when he does, because even across the house he will feel the brush of Charles’ mind, seeking reassurance that Erik is still _there_.

 _Never again,_ Erik tells him immediately, every time. No matter how many times he repeats it, it never loses any sincerity.

 

 

They are still two very different men, for all the time they spent essentially comprising a single consciousness. After Charles has recovered to a degree – still quick to turn to Erik for support, but no longer consumed by knotted blackness, smiling and joking and taking charge of the students again – Erik still tries to hold himself back, until he’s sitting across from Charles in the study, until he catches himself making a noise of disagreement and disbelief.

He gets out “Charles—” before he manages to stop himself, but Charles is already focused on him, eyes bright and stunningly hard in a way Erik hasn’t seen in _ages_.

“Erik,” Charles says, voice low, and oh, he’s been holding this back just as long as Erik’s been biting down his disagreement, “I am not made of glass.”

Something in Erik’s chest loosens.

They get into an incredible argument.

 

 

It unnerves the students. Even Raven and Janos look slightly wary when Erik and Charles go silent, staring at each other and having a blazing row entirely in their minds, because things have finally become something close to comfortable, the end of a slow climb to the level of trust that’s eventually been established between Xavier’s mutants and the Brotherhood. It doesn’t take a telepath to recognize that they think – at least at first – every fight is the prelude to another division, one that would be considerably messier than a ( _terrible, aching_ ) relatively uncomplicated parting along already established team lines on the beach.

Erik isn’t altogether sure how to reassure them, pretending he was the sort to reassure. Even if he was comfortable talking about it, he would have no way to adequately express himself, because how he feels about Charles, how they feel about one another, is complicated and utterly _complete_ in a way words can’t describe. No matter how the fights end – with one of them conceding his point, with compromise, with armistice – that cannot even begin to change. The idea of _leaving_ is ludicrous.

Only Emma looks calm, knowing.

 

 

The first time they have an argument that lasts longer than a day, Erik spends a sleepless hour in another bed and then finds himself outside Charles’ door – their door – even before he feels the tentative telepathic request.

 

 

Eventually the fights become debates. Slowly, their opinions change, just enough.

Erik comes to understand what Charles really means by “better men”: that mutants can still be as petty and angry and vindictive as humans, but they – Charles, Erik, the students, the Brotherhood – could be, _should be_ more. And Charles, for his part, accepts that instinctive fear of the unknown will sometimes only turn into anger, into hate; that humans are eager to have scapegoats, and using the unfamiliar is easy. But Erik will always expect the worst and Charles will always presume the best; Erik will always be willing to turn to tactics Charles would not, and Charles will always favor diplomacy first.

Once, it had frustrated Erik that Charles had refused to see what he considered reason, the obvious truth of things. Now the way they’ve found to fit together makes him wonder if it wasn’t by some design, some ridiculous shared secondary mutation that simply made them perfect for one another.

 

 

Over  half a year after he returns, Erik – grudgingly – stops protesting Charles using Cerebro, after repeated assurances from Hank that this time will _not_ result in Charles collapsing. When they find Ororo Munroe all the way in Africa and Charles doesn’t throw up anywhere, he’s as utterly exhilarated as he was the first time, bright and grinning at Erik with a delight that makes all the time they lost slip away. When Hank’s busying himself with the results Erik finds himself touching Charles’ jaw, running a thumb beside the corner of his mouth, and he’s amazed – staggered – that he’s somehow found room to love the telepath more than ever.

That evening, in Erik’s room that’s become theirs, they have an argument – not a large one, by any means; more playful than anything else. Charles has determined to be the one that goes to Africa, but even with Azazel Erik is more than slightly dubious about the idea – of having Charles that far away, really. As open as the connection is, with the two of them alone and relaxed, Charles catches his concern and laughs, so damned _fond_ it makes him ache.

“I never said I was planning on going without you,” Charles tells him, smiling, nearly grinning, and he’s so – almost smug, fucking beautiful, that it leaves Erik breathless and wanting in one great, sudden rush. And of course Charles catches _that_ , too, that cocky, teasing expression chased right off his face by surprise.

Erik is rapidly trying to figure out how to backtrack – because for all that they’ve shared a bed since the moment he came back, it’s because neither of them is willing to leave the other and nothing more and Erik can’t press, _won’t press_ – when Charles catches a hand in his shirt and pulls him down into a kiss. It is, for a moment, completely awkward, and then Erik shifts down and catches Charles’ face in his hands and it’s simply completely perfect.

In the kiss Charles lets him feel everything, all of his doubt and uncertainty, snips of thoughts like _broken_ and _useless_ and _disgusted_. Erik knows Charles can read it easily out of his mind, now, but later he still ends up murmuring just how wrong Charles is against pale swaths of bare skin.

 

 

The next morning, Emma makes a show of collecting Shaw’s helmet and giving the two of them a long, utterly dry look that speaks volumes on the decorum of psychic projection. Erik politely tries not to grin too wide, a hand on Charles’ shoulder, and when the telepath turns his head to press a kiss to his wrist, Erik can feel him smiling.


End file.
